Voices

Windows and Mirrors - Read, Think, Do - Florence Sprague - February 2023

After a painfully long time since the first incursion of Europeans onto North America we have entered an era of the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement. You have likely seen and heard them in many places, from the start of events for League, the Guthrie Theater, your place of worship, museums, restaurants…well, just about everywhere it seems, and this is a good thing.

LWVMN recently released the version shown on the right [https://www.lwvmn.org/land-acknowledgement]. When drafting this wording, LWVMN used many resources in the indigenous community, particularly the Native Governance Center. I encourage you to go to LWVMN’s Indigenous Land Acknowledgement page and read the interesting resources that accompany the statement.

Windows and Mirrors - Stolpersteine - Florence Sprague - January 2023

Stolpersteine: A history of Germany's Holocaust remembrance stumbling stonesBig injuries require big responses, right? Perhaps not always. The Holocaust engineered by Nazi Germany murdered millions, mostly Jewish, men, women, and children, but also the Romany, homosexuals, persons with disabilities, and political enemies of the regime. Such an immense crime must not be forgotten, but that very immensity makes it particularly difficult to grapple with. Some communities in Germany and across Europe have chosen a way of recognizing the lives lost which is more personal, both for the lives destroyed and the living. They place stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, into the sidewalk.

Windows and Mirrors - College Worthy - Florence Sprague - November 2022

Earlier this fall the radio program This American Life rebroadcast an episode from 2015, “Three Miles” (listen at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/550/three-miles or read the transcript at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/550/transcript). It is the story of several students whose schools were a mere three miles apart in New York City, but whose lives felt thousands of miles apart. A pair of friends

Windows and Mirrors - Generating Generational Voting? - Florence Sprague - October 2022

Do you vote? I hope that sounds like a silly question to ask of an LWV of Roseville Area member. How do you think of voting? Is it a right...a privilege...a responsibility...a duty...an opportunity...a power...a burden? Pointless?

Minnesota is proud of its high voter turnout in general elections. (You can view lots of voter data at https://www.sos.state.mn.us/election-administration-campaigns/data-maps/historical-voter-turnout-statistics/) About 80% of eligible voters voted in 2020. But when one looks at the numbers by age, it is clear that we cannot stop promoting voting.

Windows and Mirrors - Moral Silhouette - Florence Sprague - April 2022

Moral silhouette. Such an evocative phrase. While I quickly recall the general topic of the article wherein I saw it—the Berlin Wall—and I recall the phrase—moral silhouette—so evocative while still so malleable, yet I cannot recall the source of the article or the precise meaning the author imparted to this phrase. Was it the wall itself, the people who resisted it, the people who built it, or the Cold War in totality whose moral silhouettes the author was seeking to evoke? It could be any or all of the above. Some manifest in my mind as negative space for the harm done, some more like old-fashioned silhouette paper cuttings, for persons of courage in the face of brutality. These are events of my lifetime. How long beyond the lives of those then living will these moral silhouettes persist?

Windows and Mirrors - Upwardly Mobile? - Florence Sprague - March 2022

It sounds so easy, so straightforward. Give someone who could not otherwise afford college a
scholarship and you give them access to a better life. But that transition is not always so easy or
straightforward. Listen to the stories of first-generation college students stumbling through school
unaware of the unstated “rules” and expectations of college. What are office hours? Where do my
parents belong in my life now? How do I socialize with classmates who have so much money?

Windows and Mirrors - (Ex) Termination - Florence Sprague - February 2022

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look wrong, and wrong look right.

—Black Hawk, An Autobiography (quote seen on plaque embedded in the sidewalk in Iowa City)

Many LWVMN and LWV of Roseville Area events now incorporate an acknowledgement that our
communities are located on the ancestral lands of Native Americans, the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples here in
Minnesota. I did not initiate this custom, coming to it after hearing it at several events. We are all aware at
some level that the entire North American continent was totally reallocated, reorganized, and just outright
taken from indigenous peoples by European colonists due to orthogonal understandings of the concept of
property and a massive power differential. The land grants from European kings to early colonies had no
ethical foundation and treaties under which millions of acres of land were ceded in the 1800s were grossly
unfair.

Windows and Mirrors -Two Signs - Florence Sprague - January 2022

Perhaps you saw it—an editorial page cartoon by Steve Sack in the Star Tribune in the summer of 2020—two houses, two neighbors chatting over the fence, and two signs in one yard. The signs say “Black Lives Matter” and “We Support Our Local Police.” One man is saying to the other man “If you think they conflict maybe it’s you with the problem.” It struck a chord.

I can see why they are so often thought to be orthogonal today. It needn’t be the case.

Perhaps the crux of the conflict comes in the intent behind “support.” For me, support means willingly paying taxes; endorsing a respectful, living wage for all public employees; backing good training for all public safety employees, both before and throughout employment; treating those public safety employees with whom I come into contact with respect, courtesy, and thanks as the situation warrants; and acknowledging the value of the job and the risks it entails.

Windows and Mirrors - Two Should Be Greater Than One - Florence Sprague - November/December 2021

English, English, English. It is the language of common parlance in the United States and is traditionally considered beneficial for economic success worldwide. But there is another aspect for immigrant families. When learning English comes at the cost of not learning the language of your parents and grandparents, there is profound loss. Loss of connection to elders, culture, identity, history, community…

In Europe it is not uncommon for people to be bilingual, or multi-lingual. English is often the second or third language. It does not erase the other languages, nor does speaking German, French, or Czech as a first language prevent the learning of English. In Africa many people speak multiple languages, a mix of local and colonial. It is not an inherent limitation of the human brain to speak or understand only one form of communication. What is it about the United States that makes bilingualism so difficult to sustain?

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